Jeanine Harms’ brother kills chief suspect, then himself

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Jeanine Harms' parents, Jesus and Georgette Sanchez, with a photo of their late daughter, Jeanine, at their Campbell home Wednesday July 14, 2010. Jeanine Harms disappeared July 27, 2001 after meeting two men at a bar and asking both of them home. (Photo by Patrick Tehan/Mercury News)

Maurice Nasmeh, who was accused of murdering Jeanine Harms in 2001, was released this week after being jailed since 2004 . The San Jose architect spoke to journalists in June 2007 in his lawyer's San Jose office about the police investigation of him, his time in jail and the judicial system. (Pauline Lubens/San Jose Mercury News)

Pictured is Jeanine Harms. The 42-year-old Amdahl employee is the subject of a search by Los Gatos police after she was reported missing. She was last seen July 28, 2001 leaving the Rock Bottom Brewery in Campbell around 1 a.m. with an unidentified man.

Maurice Nasmeh, who was accused of murdering Jeanine Harms in 2001, was released this week after being jailed since 2004 . The San Jose architect spoke to journalists in June 2007 in his lawyer's San Jose office about the police investigation of him, his time in jail and the judicial system. (Pauline Lubens/San Jose Mercury News)

For nearly a decade, the family of Jeanine Harms struggled with the mystery of how she disappeared and who might have been responsible. Over the weekend, authorities said, her 52-year-old brother took justice into his own hands.

On Saturday night, as employees of Peet’s Coffee & Tea shop in the El Paseo de Saratoga Shopping Center watched in horror, Wayne Sanchez gunned down the chief suspect, Maurice Nasmeh, and ran into the parking lot, police said. Then, just as officers were arriving, Sanchez turned the gun on himself.

The dramatic series of events began earlier that night at the Red Robin restaurant in the same shopping center. There, Sanchez confronted Nasmeh and accused him of killing his sister nearly 10 years ago.

Sanchez left the restaurant briefly, then returned. But Nasmeh left and headed to Peet’s, as Sanchez followed. Inside the coffee shop, the two exchanged words before Sanchez pulled the trigger, police said.

“It’s just utterly tragic,” said Harms’ best friend, Janice Burnham.

The murder-suicide was a stunning development in a case that has frustrated investigators and agonized the families of Harms and Nasmeh since the hot July night in 2001 when the Los Gatos woman disappeared.

She had gone to a bar at the Pruneyard shopping center in Campbell to meet a man she had previously stood up. While she was waiting for the man to arrive, Harms met Nasmeh and a group of his friends at the bar, the Rock Bottom Brewery. After more drinks, Harms invited both men to her home for a nightcap.

She was never seen again.

Nasmeh, a San Jose architect, spent two years in jail, accused of killing Harms, who worked at Amdahl as a purchasing manager.

But all charges against Nasmeh were eventually dropped because of problems with the Santa Clara County crime lab’s testing of carpet fibers.

For all these years, as he took freelance jobs as an architect and lived alone on the outskirts of downtown San Jose, he maintained his innocence.

The murder-suicide occurred during a bustling Saturday night at the shopping center, home to the AMC Saratoga theaters. Police would not say how many customers were at Peet’s at the time of the killing. And while there was clearly some kind of confrontation at the Red Robin, police received no calls of a disturbance there, said Officer Jose Garcia.

Whether Sanchez had harassed Nasmeh in the past was not known. And police wouldn’t say whether the meeting of the two men at the Red Robin was a chance encounter or whether Sanchez had followed him there.

“It’s possible it was a coincidence. It’s possible there was more to it,” said Sgt. Jason Dwyer. “We really don’t know.”

Sanchez lived just a few blocks away from the El Paseo de Saratoga center, located on Saratoga Avenue at Hamilton Avenue in West San Jose. He still lived with his parents and apparently was unemployed.

His parents, Jess and Georgette, did not learn of their son’s death until Sunday morning and declined to talk to reporters.

Neighbors were shocked at the turn of events and aching for the couple, who have now lost a son as well as a daughter.

“I can just feel for their parents, what they’re going through,” said Murray Kreitzer, 81, a retired United Airlines mechanic who lives across the street.

“It’s hard to believe,” he said. “I don’t know what kind of stability his mind was in, but I never dreamed that anything would happen like that.”

Al Ambelange, who grew up on the block with Sanchez, said he understood how frustrated and angry Sanchez must have felt about the disappearance of his sister and the inability of the police to solve the crime.

“I would have done the same thing,” said Ambelange, 58. “If someone hassled my daughter or my sister, they would have been dead, too.”

Even though Sanchez was “a little on the hard side,” Ambelange said, “he had a deep heart. I liked Wayne. He was a nice guy, normally. But I guess when someone loses a sibling, you never know what’s going to happen.”

In interviews with the Mercury News over the past few months, Nasmeh had repeatedly said he was innocent. He didn’t want to go on the record at the time because of the impact of the story on his family and friends.

“I don’t care about myself, but this has devastated my family and my friends,” he said.

He lost his job with an architectural firm after he was arrested on suspicion of killing Harms and had been taking freelance architectural jobs for the past year.

For Christmas, he decorated a huge peace sign with lights in front of his small Hedding Street home and used a picture of it for his Christmas cards. He said he planned to help serve the homeless holiday meals rather than stay at home alone.

Nasmeh’s neighbors on Sunday called him “well-mannered and courteous.”

They said they didn’t know he was a suspect in Harms’ disappearance and that they thought he had a girlfriend.

“He planted all the flowers. He made the house look alive when he moved in,” neighbor Frances Rey said.

Another neighbor, Ramona Delgado, said that Nasmeh stopped by on Christmas to give her a jar of lemon peach jelly he had made from his own fruit trees.

“It just doesn’t seem real,” she said. “He was a real nice guy. It just feels so bad to know that your neighbor’s been gunned down.”

The case had haunted the families of both Harms and Nasmeh. There was no resolution to the legal case against Nasmeh, but prosecutors had vowed they would refile once new tests were conducted on rug fibers they say were found in Nasmeh’s trunk.

Harms’ family and friends never stopped trying to think of ways to solve the case — or to get investigators to actively work on it again.

Burnham said she and Harms’ parents spent a couple of hours recently strategizing to come up with some kind of plan that might bring new attention to the case. Since their daughter disappeared, Harms’ parents have thought of little else besides bringing her home. The 10-year anniversary of her disappearance is July 27.

“Maybe something will come out of all this,” Burnham said about the murder-suicide.

Daniel Jensen, Nasmeh’s attorney, said “the pain never stops for some families. The Sanchez family has just suffered another terrible tragedy, and so has the Nasmeh family.”

Referring to the lab results that caused the dismissal of charges against Nasmeh, Jensen said, “We have two more victims of junk science. Junk science kills again.”

Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said he was shocked by the violence.

“I reject all forms of vigilantism and I express my dismay and condolences to everyone connected to this incident, most notably to Georgette and Jess Sanchez,” he said.

He vowed that the scientific analysis of physical evidence at the heart of the investigation into Harms’ disappearance will continue. “Once these results are determined within the next six months, I will make another statement,” Rosen said.

As recently as two weeks ago, when Nasmeh met with a Mercury News reporter, he said he was still hopeful he could clear his name.

Months before, as he showed a reporter the meticulously tended tomatoes, peppers and flowers in his garden, Nasmeh said: “I make things grow. I don’t kill them.”